So I apologise. When someone’s post begins talking about Louisa Wall and the Marriage Equality Bill, I assume they’re talking about Louisa Wall and the Marriage Equality Bill. But clearly, Stuart was talking

about the strategy Labour has pursued so far this year

and while you may assume that when a person starts talking about A, then starts talking about B entirely in the context of A, they’re drawing some kind of connection between A and B, you would be wrong. And you should be ashamed. Why, when Stuart starts by saying:

I want to start by saying that I support gay marriage and, if I had been in parliament, I would have had no hesitation in voting in favor of Louisa Wall’s marriage equality bill. It sits perfectly with the Labour values of fairness and equality.

Despite that, I am not happy about it!

And over the next two paragraphs says

… I warned that Labour must not get sidetracked …Labour MUST NOT get sucked into the game of responding to these periphery and/or manufactured issues …

Little did I know that it wasn’t the Nats who would create the side shows … Louisa’s Bill was ill-timed … the fact that it was drawn out of the ballot was unlucky for Labour). For the past month or so this issue has been at the forefront of the mainstream and social media.

And then continues

In the meantime, the state assets sales programme is in trouble, farms have been sold to the Chinese, educationists decry the rise of charter schools, the poverty gap is increasing at an alarming rate, Kiwis are heading to Australia in record numbers, our unemployment rate is climbing, and there is at least one dreadful health story a day that should be in the papers.

Instead, after Louisa Wall has put in the hard yards and taken shit for something in your own party’s manifesto less than a year ago, what you should really do is buy into the rightwing propaganda machine’s lines about “caring about things that matter”, and what you should really talk about is how, oh sure, a member of your party only brought us one step closer towards our egalitarian ideal, but don’t you wish she hadn’t?

I’m really just misrepresenting Stuart. He didn’t say that Louisa Wall shouldn’t have submitted her Bill, he just thinks … she shouldn’t have submitted her Bill. And he’s not buying into the idea that marriage equality isn’t important, he’s just saying it’s a peripheral sideshow issue distracting from the things that matter. And he’s not bagging her, he just feels the need to write another post talking about the “unlucky” timing of it all on top of his previous insistence that she “hold back” for The Good Of The Party.

But it’s okay, folks. Stuart has good people around him. From his second post:

Anyone that knows me, my family and my politics will know that I value human rights above all else. Equality of opportunity is my guiding philosophy and the reason why I am involved in the Labour party.

And you know that when someone says above all else, that’s a pretty strong statement indicating they won’t compromise on their core principles. Someone who values human rights above all else would never, for example, write something like:

Louisa has to hold back. The vast majority agree that her bill is morally right and should be passed into law, but now it needs to take a back seat and let the issues of health, employment, education and finance come to the fore, otherwise there won’t be anyone left in New Zealand who can afford to get married.

… just like Stuart did in his first post. I do so look forward to hearing about how finance reform will mean same-sex couples stop being treated like second-class citizens. Oh right, because they won’t be able to afford to get married. You know how the queers like to splash out on frocks, we need to avoid another recession for their sakes!

But then we are dealing with somebody who can sincerely type (in his second post):

Labour doesn’t need to convince voters that our values are sound

Which is true, because before voters can ask if your values are sound they have to know what your values are, and for someone who spends a lot of time emphasising that Labour Is A Great Party With Amazing Values And The Left

owns the political space around human rights

… Stuart sure loves acting like those values don’t mean shit unless Labour can convince voters that they are

prudent managers of the economy

… a phrase used twice in his second post.

Sorry, Stuart. I guess I’m just going to keep unwittingly misrepresenting you, because for all you’ve made a second post about how people didn’t understand your first post, all I hear is “waa waa waa shut up minorities” with a coda on the theme of “anyway we don’t need to talk about values, just the economy, so shut up again”.

And when you’re blaming a single, well-supported Private Member’s Bill for an entire party’s inability to get on the telly, you should probably reconsider your political strategy cred.

Please, Stuart. Try to dig up next time.

~

PS. Doesn’t it absolutely tickle you to see someone waving the Old Left banner talking about “owning political space”? Human rights discussions aren’t a commodity, Stuart. And you don’t get to “dibs” the human rights conversation, especially not when you’re saying some human rights (i.e. the icky gay ones) can go sit in the corner quietly while the real human rights issues (i.e. the ones assumed to affect Waitakere Myths) get some breathing space.

And don’t you love him quoting National’s favourite line about “equality of opportunity”.

As for “owns the political space around human rights” – what total fucking twaddle. This is the party that brought us neoliberalism which has set human rights for everyone other than the comfy middleclass and up, back more than a century.

Poor little privileged boy wants to trade on the family name to get himself a cushy little number for himself in parliament so he can patronise and pontificate and swan around with the jet-set and get paid many times the median wage to do so.

If that’s what Labour represents these days he can shove it up his soft, three-ply designer bog paper massaged arse.

“Equality of opportunity” = “look, we gave you a school lunch, if you fail from here on in it’s because you didn’t work hard enough, which gives us an excuse to keep trying to “regain the centre” by hating on beneficiaries”.

“let me start with the premise that the left owns the political space around human rights;”

If he’s starting with this premise – then how on earth can pushing a human rights issue be a bad thing? Surely trying to disuade your party from focusing (non exclusively) on human rights is to suggest that your party shouldn’t be part of the left any more. Maybe he’s suggesting Labour needs to ignore the left and capture the center again. Pagini mkII?

And don’t you love him quoting National’s favourite line about “equality of opportunity”.

If you don’t have equal access to resources then there’s no way you can have “equality of opportunity” and, from what I can make out, neither Labour nor National will change that. They both work to the idea that privatisation of the commons is good.